


One Second Closer

by goldenrose95



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2009!phan at the end, Angst, Bullying, Fluff, Growing Up, M/M, Soulmate AU, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, possible depression, the usual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-14 18:04:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5753035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldenrose95/pseuds/goldenrose95
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Soulmate AU where you're born with a timer on your wrist that counts down to the moment you meet your soulmate. Except there's one other case when the numbers reach zero, and Phil doesn't find out until he's too late. Almost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Second Closer

**Author's Note:**

> I know a lot of people already took this prompt up, and I myself uploaded a first draft of this on tumblr when I first saw it. But after re-reading it I realized it was crap and went through a ton of rewriting to get this. Hopefully it's better.  
> Also in Russian translated by the awesome drowningstumph https://ficbook.net/readfic/4095524

Dan was five years old when he first learned the meaning of the numbers on his left wrist. 4693 days / 21:09:42 it now read, the last digit counting down with every tick of the clock. The numbers had fascinated him for as long as he could remember: the seconds that impatiently flew away, the minutes that marched steadily on, the hours that lazily dragged off one by one, and the days that he kept watching during lunchtime until the hours, minutes, and seconds ebbed away to zeros and one day would leave his wrist. He never knew whether he was supposed to be happy or sad about it, so one day he tugged on his mother’s apron while she was busy making dinner and asked a question.

“Mommy, why do the numbers keep moving?”

Mrs. Howell smiled at her son and rinsed her hands before drawing a damp finger across the line of numbers on his wrist.

“When all these numbers become zero, you meet the most important person of your life,” she said, and showed him her own wrist. Unlike his, her numbers lay in solid unmoving zeros.

"Why is yours zero, mommy?" Dan asked. "Who did you meet?"

Mrs. Howell smiled again and a hint of red appeared on her cheeks.

"Your father," she replied. A delighted smile came over Dan's lips as well.

"So if all the numbers turn into zeros, I meet someone like daddy?"

"Maybe," Mrs. Howell patted her son's head with a laugh. "But whoever it is, you will love that person very much, and that person will love you too. You will be perfect for each other."

Dan's smile grew wider as he stared down at his numbers and rubbed them with his thumb. He wished they would go down faster, because he wanted to meet that person very soon.

***

Phil caught himself staring at the numbers on his right wrist again. He couldn't stop thinking about them, and the person the countdown was leading up to. Ever since he entered secondary school a sort of anxiety began rising inside him, a fervent desire to meet his soulmate that gnawed at his every waking moment. The fact that his classmates kept asking him how much time he had left didn't help, although for the record, it just hit 2547 days, 12:09:56.

He sighed, resting his lips against one hand as the other absently stroked the numbers that separated him from his soulmate. His heart still fluttered every time he thought about it - the perfect person for him, someone he could love with all his heart, and would love him back just as much. At least, that's how his parents had explained it. He wondered what being in love like that would feel like. He had dated a few girls before, but something didn't feel... right with them. He wasn't sure what, but it always left him thinking that his soulmate would be different.

He just wished the numbers would count off sooner.

***

Dan lay in bed, his head buried in the pillows to smother his sobs. It had been a particularly bad day; a teacher called him out in front of the whole class because of some stupid mistake he made and the bullies were there during lunch again, and he somehow managed to keep it all down until he got home and locked himself in his room. Then the voices in his head started attacking him again and the tears came raining down as he lay in bed, his sobs unable to drown out the words that cut deeper into him each time.

_Stupid._

_Useless._

_Failure._

_Nobody cares about you._

_Why are you still alive?_

He wanted to go to sleep and never wake up, because waking up meant another day of school, another day of sitting alone in the invisible corner of the classroom and the bullies picking on him every second of lunchtime. He wanted to disappear, be anywhere but this shitty life that was his.

When Dan finally cried himself dry he lifted his head and stared at the numbers on his wrist. Usually those counting seconds would give him hope, tell him that there was someone out there who would someday find him and love him so much that it would make life worth living.

But not today. Today he saw nothing but meaningless numbers counting down to a moment he stopped believing in a long time ago.

The next day Dan rummaged through the drawer where the family kept all their medications and found the sleeping pills. He didn't do anything with them - just stared at them, his thumb rubbing the numbers on his wrist out of habit. He ended up closing the drawer and walking away, but now he knew for sure where they were.

And there was enough for an overdose.

***

Phil was staring at his English homework, half zoned out, when a random flickering gaze told him that the day count on his wrist had suddenly dropped to one.

He almost jumped, wondering what had changed: had his soulmate moved? Was there a new student coming to school? Was he going to bump into a stranger in one day, seven hours, three minutes and fifteen seconds? He couldn't keep his excitement down, and spent the rest of the day just watching the numbers as each second brought him closer to his soulmate.

But when the day receded to a zero in the middle of the night, Phil became a little wary. What could he possibly do in twenty four hours that would involve meeting a stranger at 12:23 am? He wasn't even allowed outside the house after 10.

He ended up going to bed that night with his mind full of questions as to how he and his soulmate were supposed to find each other, his sleep-infested brain finally deciding that if they really were soulmates, they would figure something out. Maybe there would be an accident outside his house in the middle of the night, and he would have to go save his soulmate.

On second thought, that was probably a bad idea. He didn't want to lose his soulmate the second he found them.

The final day dawned, and Phil was seriously worried now. His classes barely registered into his brain as he tried to imagine all kinds of scenarios he would have to be in to meet his soulmate in the dead of the night. Maybe his soulmate was an alien who would come to abduct him and take him back to his home planet. Maybe his soulmate was an elf who would come to his window at midnight riding a unicorn. Maybe his soulmate was in a gang of kidnappers that would kidnap him but they fell in love and had to make an impossible escape... the list went on and on. The day never felt longer and Phil constantly checked his wrist, wishing time would go faster.

When the final hour drew near, Phil wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do. Should he slip outside and wait there? Should he go somewhere where he was more likely to bump into strangers? In the end he decided that if he and his soulmate were going to somehow find each other, he should just stay where he would usually be - his room. So with an hour left on his wrist, Phil locked himself in his bedroom, waiting for his soulmate to arrive.

***

Dan sat on the edge of his bed, a glass of water in one hand and a small handful of sleeping pills in the other. There was no way he could swallow them all at once, but he knew that he would have to or he would lose his nerve. Before he had a chance to doubt his decisions he threw the pills in his mouth and quickly gulped the water down. The mass of pills burned the inside of his throat as they struggled down his esophagus, and he drank more water to force them down as hot tears stung his eyes.

He soon felt the drowsiness kick in and fell backwards onto the mattress, welcoming the sleep. In what was probably the last few seconds of consciousness he had left on this earth his thoughts drifted, dotted with random memories, some of which he hadn't even thought about in a long time. Images of his family and school. The first sunrise he ever saw with his parents at New Years. Playing video games with his little brother. The numbers that even now were counting two thousand days down on his wrist.

His soulmate.

Dan realized that his hands were close together enough for his fingers to brush against the numbers on his wrist. For a long time, the thought of seeing his soulmate one day was the one thing that kept him going, living through another day, but after everything he'd been through he was giving up now. He was never going to see his soulmate, ever.

And the thought only occurred to him now that maybe, his soulmate needed him as much as he needed them. Maybe he had meant something to his soulmate, and maybe, just maybe,  his soulmate, too, had been living with the hope of one day meeting him. But he just took that away from whoever his soulmate had been.

"I'm sorry..."

A tear flowed down the side of Dan’s face as he finally closed his eyes.

***

Phil had decided to get some homework done during the remaining hour, and he was sitting on his bed with his math textbook in front of him when something suddenly caught in his throat. His insides felt like they were burning; he couldn't breathe, and he fell onto his brightly colored duvet, one hand clutching his throat in an attempt to free it from whatever was trying to kill him. Then the pain was gone, as suddenly as it came, leaving him coughing and sputtering. When he finally regained his breath, the first thing he did was to check his wrist.

Zero. All of them.

Panic welled up and clogged his mind as he tried to comprehend what was going on. Why did the numbers show nothing but zero? Where was his soulmate?

Did something... happen to them?

Tears began to pool in his eyes as realization hit. Zero. His soulmate was gone. Something went wrong and his soulmate was dead and he didn't even know how or why. Why couldn't he have realized this sooner? Why had he been so stupidly excited when his soulmate had had only a day left to live?

Phil wished he could do something, _anything_ , but he had no idea who his soulmate was, let alone where they were. So he just lay where he was, curled into a ball, holding the line of zeros over his heart like a lifeline.

_Please_ , he prayed as tears trailed down his face. _Please don't die. I'm sorry I couldn't be there for you. I'm sorry I had been such an idiot. Please, please don't leave me._

_Please._

***

Dan woke up to a clean, white ceiling with soft orange lights that didn't belong to his room.

He tried to sit up, dazed and confused. He was on a clean, narrow bed surrounded by what looked like medical equipments, and his mother was seated in a chair by the foot of the bed, slumped over the mattress and sound asleep. His brain was barely beginning to register the fact that he was probably in a hospital, and out of sheer habit, he raised his wrist to check his numbers.

2541 days, 06:01:14.

Dan sighed as he absently rubbed the numbers. So he wasn’t dead. His parents probably found him before he actually died and called an ambulance or something. A strange mix of feelings swelled in his mind, but right now his brain was still too tired to think about it.

The one thing that did linger in this mind, though, was a small voice in his head, telling him that he shouldn't die until he found his soulmate. That pill-swallowing last night felt terrible anyway. He probably couldn't swallow another pill now to save his life.

But he was almost glad. Maybe waiting to find his soulmate before deciding whether he still wanted to stay in this world or not wasn't such a bad idea.

He sighed again, his thumb rubbing the numbers, before he softly whispered, "Thank you."

***

Phil woke up to the rays of sunlight streaming through his windows and poking into his eyelids. He must have cried himself to sleep at some point. He rubbed his eyes with a yawn, then almost jumped as last night’s memories came flooding back to him. He instantly checked his wrist.

The days were back in the two thousands.

Tears of relief came rushing to his eyes as he held those numbers over his heart again. It was alright. Whatever had happened, his soulmate was alive and it was going to be alright.

"Thank you," Phil whispered, the tears trailing down to his lips and mingling with his words. "Thank you for staying alive."

***

Dan felt his heart race as the train slowed down. He still couldn't believe that Amazingphil - THE Amazingphil himself - had invited him to Manchester. He had watched his videos from the beginning, and they never failed to make him laugh. After every crappy day he could go to his laptop and watch Phil's videos, and it would help him forget all the shit he was in at the moment.

He also may or may not have developed a secret crush on the guy.

Of course, it had been the more... "innocent" kind in the beginning, the sort of crush that fangirls may have on celebrities, but then he ended up spamming Phil with messages online in the blind hope that he may one day actually respond - which he did. He still congratulated himself for not passing out on the spot or screaming like a cat whose tail was just stepped on when he saw the reply. But messages turned into skype sessions and the more he talked with Phil, the more he realized that he may actually be falling in love with him. And meeting someone you had already fallen in love with for the first time was even more nerve-wrecking than he thought. But that wasn't the only reason why Dan’s heart was beating like a world-class drummer was holding a personal concert in his ribcage.

His numbers were now under five minutes.

He had first noticed how much they had gone down a few months ago, when the days dropped to a hundred. But when he made plans to go visit Phil and saw that the dates matched up, he began to hope...

No, it wasn't possible. He could never be soulmate to someone as amazing and brilliant as Phil. He couldn't even entertain the thought because as soon as he began the contemplation, his brain would suddenly jerk to life and start listing all the reasons why he was such a failure who couldn't even end his own life. He couldn't even stand to swallow pills now for fuck's sake.

So Dan pretended not to think about it. Better not to expect anything than be let down, he thought, although his thumb kept rubbing the numbers on his wrist without his brain's permission. He tried to direct his thoughts to Phil instead, about how he was really meeting him in person now, about how beautiful he looked through a screen and how unimaginably more beautiful he would be in real life, and how he was completely in love with him.

Shit, maybe not that last one.

Dan stepped down from the train with his bags, and a sudden fear came over him that Phil might not even be there. This might all be just one horrible prank and maybe Phil never even liked him and just made him come all the way to Manchester to laugh at him.

But he was wrong, because there Phil was, holding a giant sign above his head with Dan's name spelled out in bright bubble letters. Euphoria coursed through Dan's veins as he ran towards Phil, the weight of his bag forgotten. Phil stood with his arms wide open and Dan jumped right in, their long, lanky limbs wrapping around each other as Dan laughed into Phil's shoulder, taking in the warmth surrounding him. _Finally_.

His perfect little moment shattered, however, when he heard sobs by his ear and felt Phil's frame trembling against his own.

"Phil?" Dan asked, alarmed. Phil only responded in hiccups and broken sobs, and Dan stood rooted to the spot, frozen in panic and wondering what he did wrong. A few minutes later the sobs began to die down, and Dan finally heard a soft, low voice in his ear.

"Thank you," Phil whispered.

"Um... For what?" Dan said, his arms still awkwardly wrapped around Phil and his brain frantically rummaging through the "Social Situations" department to find a more appropriate response. But Phil's next words wiped all of that clear from his mind.

"Thank you for staying alive."

Dan stood dumbstruck, and Phil finally let him go and showed him his wrist.

Zero. All of them.

"When I saw that... that the dates matched up, I thought... I thought it might be you," Phil said, smiling through the tears that still streamed down his cheeks. "Then I arrived at the station and I... and I realized that it was really counting down to your train. I kept watching it, then when it hit zero I looked up and saw you."

Tears fogged Dan's vision as he slowly brought his own wrist up, almost afraid to see what the numbers said. But they were all solid zeros, like the ones he had seen on his mother's wrist all those years ago.

"Five years ago," Phil said, his voice still thick with tears. "I don't know what happened, but... but something hit me and I... I felt like I was going to die. Then they all turned into zeros and I got scared because I thought you were dead but you're not. Oh god thank you so much."

Phil enveloped Dan in a hug again and Dan slowly wrapped his arms around Phil, as if to check that this really wasn't just a dream. The tears spilled over as he realized no, it was all real - the soft, thin material of Phil's shirt brushing against his neck and Phil's arms holding him tightly to his chest and the warmth of Phil's skin and Phil's sobbing breath against his ear and Phil's _everything_.

"Thank you," Dan choked out, burying his face in the crook of Phil's shoulder and _yes, it was worth it_ , _it was all worth it_. Phil released him and cupped his face in his hands, gently wiping away the tears with the pads of his thumb. Dan wanted to tell him so many things - how he waited all his life to meet him, how he had been a light in the darkest of his days, how he literally kept him alive even when they didn't know who the other was or where they were. But the words wouldn't come, so Dan just pulled Phil back into a hug. He wanted to remember every second of this, how exactly Phil's body felt against his, how his head nestled just below Phil's, how Phil's skin radiated a soft warmth that seeped through him as he thought, _This is it. This is him. Phil - fucking Amazingphil - is my soulmate._

And he realized, he wouldn't have it any other way.

**Author's Note:**

> Also on my tumblr, which is goldenrose95  
> Edit: Here's the link to the original (with my crappy phan rendition of it)   
> http://goldenrose95.tumblr.com/post/130560678741/one-lastmiracle-a-cumberbatch-of-cookies  
> I didn't realize how much attention it would get and I thought it would be better to admit now that I had an inspiration.


End file.
